Wildheart
by atree
Summary: One day in the life of Blake Belladonna. Or, why she's so quiet. [Even more than tuna she wants meat: rare, bloody meat she can tear into with fangs and claws and make a mess of, because she knows what the youngest kitten knows when it hunts down its first mouse: that the act of eating is equally as important as the taste.]


A/N: This is the third of my experimental, sort-of character studies. Not entirely canonical.

Wildheart

Fetid meat and garbage. The café reeks of rotten fish, of week-old vegetables, of the slick of dried grease lining the pan that makes Blake ill at the thought of ingesting. Humans stuff themselves with corpse meat not even the lowliest scavenger would stomach – and the humans _pay_ for it.

And she is paying for it, waiting to pay for it in a line a dozen humans thick under a blazing August sun that illuminates the world too brightly. Sweat dampens the fur over her ears and she wants to scratch it but even Faunus know propriety, and the next-best solution is to lie in the shade – the temperature is perfect for a noonday nap – but that, of course, is also impossible. Mostly she wants escape. She does not want to be here in this gathering of humans, chittering, squawking, shrieking humans, little humans whose cries pierce her ears like bullets and how did such a species survive when the cries of their young can draw predators from miles away?

"How can I help you?"

The seller of sweet meats is middle-aged and balding and he reeks of fear. The stink of it throttles her. His pupils dilate; the hair on the back of his arms rise; his breaths come out in quick, sharp gasps, and he tries very hard to hide his fear, looking not at her but at a point over her shoulder. A poor camouflage. His fear triggers a series of mirrored responses that dilates her own eyes, raises her own hackles, quickens her own breath – how strange that two opposite passions produce the same reaction. Fight and flight. She feels an urge to bury her fangs in his neck and gorge on the blood that will spray like summer rain. Prey does not encounter a predator and walk away.

"One strawberry smoothie please," Blake says pleasantly.

He scoops it out and she gives him the change. When she leaves, he lets out a breath of relief she hears as the crack of a whip. But the stink of fear remains. Less concentrated, more diffuse, coming not from one person but from several, their eyes staring at her as she makes her way back to the tables. _Is that a Faunus? What's a Faunus doing here? What's this city coming to?_ Humans whisper like scurrying ants because they think others can't hear. She is glad to be away. The more she's surrounded by fear the more it sets her on edge.

"Took you long enough," Yang says. "Strawberry again? Try something else for a change."

Blake does not tell her that strawberry is the favored fruit of cats, not quite the exquisiteness of tuna but a distant second. Humans have poor appreciation for palate. Her packmates are already eating, their faces dappled with bits of those strange, exotic foods with names like _sorbet_ and _custard_ which are too sweet, too processed, too sterile; they cannot compare to the simplicity of ice and strawberries. She dips the spoon into the smoothie and brings it to her lips. When her lips touch the ice a thrill runs down her spine. She takes a bite and _meows_ , but too softly for human ears; if her teammates hear her she will most assuredly lose her place among the pack. The ice slides down the back of her throat, blissfully cool, leaving a trail of sweetness and tartness and acerbity. Two gulps, three, four, and her smoothie is half-gone now, forcing her to slow down until she can no longer hold it and drinks the rest in a frenzy of uncontrolled gluttony and, unable to bear the guilt of the empty cup, she throws it away.

Her teammates eat slower. Human teeth are unsuited for tearing, and some strange quirk of anatomy makes humans incapable of eating without speaking. Blake murmurs and nods her head at the right moments. Humans have such love for conversation. What an animal can express with one upraised eyebrow, humans need an entire lexicon for. Entire days can pass between Faunus without a word spoken. She misses the forest-cities of Mistral. She misses running for miles from one end of the island to the other without encountering a single thing of steel and concrete. Freedom lies in the open air.

The smoothie has whet her appetite, but not for what the café passes as food. She runs a fingernail over her stomach, a trick her mother has taught her to stave cravings. Even more than tuna she wants _meat_ : rare, bloody meat she can tear into with fangs and claws and make a mess of, because she knows what the youngest kitten knows when it hunts down its first mouse: that the act of eating is equally as important as the taste. Humans, with all their focus on utensils and etiquette, don't know what they're missing.

(She misses her mother's cooking: salt and a dash of rosemary on boiled duck, hunted earlier in the day, the crispiness of the skin mixed with the tenderness of the meat and the bitterness of the veins her mother has purposely kept in, and after she licks the bones clean she cracks open the bones and sucks out the juice, what she will give for one meal back home again.)

She wants to head back to the dorms but she has to heed the will of the pack. They seem to enjoy the heat, even though they sweat as much as she does and are covered in more layers of clothes besides. So Blake rests her head in her hands and tries to nap (catnaps are shorter things: midway between wake and unwaking, more of a zoning out than true sleep), futile as it may be in the middle of the city where cars screech like mating parrots and their drivers even less reserved. Having dull senses must be a blessing. A dog barks; it recognizes her scent and acknowledges her. Its owner jerks on the leash. The couple at the next table is arguing. Somewhere down the street a shop serves barbecue, wind carrying the smell of burnt sauce sharp even amidst sweat and sewage; it makes Blake think of charred rabbit over a fire. But a true hunter is equally as capable of blocking out senses as expanding them, and the coolness of the smoothie still lingers in her throat, and she has almost succeeded when a glass of ice-cold water is upended over her head.

She jumps. The coldness and the wetness isolate all other sensations except the pain of it, the shock of it, and for one terrifying moment she is drowning.

Her attacker is not one of Roman's. Her attacker is a civilian, tall and lean. Two black eyes stare at her above sunken cheeks. His hair is long and shiny with grease, and the rest of him, too, is filthy, clothes ripped and stained with innumerable splashes that are so old and unwashed she can't recognize the smell. He stinks, and the stink of fear overpowers all others.

"My bad, Faunus."

Her packmates rise in anger, and Yang especially burns so hot Blake fears her clothes will catch fire. She holds them back with a hand.

"Apology noted," she says, and sits back down.

"You know, I didn't know this was a zoo. Can you do any tricks?"

In the wild she will slash open his throat and leave him for the vultures. Human governments are less accepting of such practices. The natural order of things is might makes right, yet the entire social structure of humans is built on the opposite. Unsurprising from a race so weak themselves. He is a kitten meowing at a tiger. The insolence rankles her, but he is beneath even insolence. The most annoying thing is the fear. Fear smells like ashes, like oil leaking from an engine, like a dead fox strung up by its entrails. Why do humans always try to hide their fear? Especially when they do such a poor job. And some, like the man, mistake fear for courage. But courage is noble, courage is the deer bounding the opposite direction – knowing full well that doing so seals its own fate – in order to draw a predator away from the herd. Fear is the raccoon hiding among the sick and elderly so he can escape while the predator is satiated with easier prey.

Blake wishes he will go away.

"You deaf, animal?" The man's voice rises. He is panicking. "I lost my wife and daughter to a White Fang attack. All of you need to be goddamn put down."

"Watch it," Yang growls. Her growl is music: deep and melodic with just the right amount of throatiness. Blake has tried to imitate it before, to capture the mountains of threat concealed in so simple a sound. Not even lions growl as well as her Yang.

"The animal has friends. Are you all flea-ridden, too?"

Snarling, Blake rises, one hand on her sword. The crowd shrieks. Fear flashes across the man's eyes so nakedly the smell makes her eyes water. He buries it with vitriol.

"You took my family away from me. Just finish the job."

An animal can stomach any injuries to itself, but will only lash out when the pack is threatened. Her own fear seeps into the air. She tries to control it but you can't control instinct honed over millennia. Ten million years of evolution blacks out the buildings and the tables and the crowds until it leaves only him, tinged with red. Uncontrollably, Gambol Shroud slides from its sheath. The world is fading. All she hears is the pounding of her pulse. All she can smell is fear.

Ruby places a hand on her arm.

"It's not worth it."

Blake breathes deeply and hears her mother's voice, told in an aside the night before she left Mistral:

 _Hate them not for their ignorance, child. Understand they're not made the same way as you and I, not raised the same. We can taste anger, caress love, hear hate. They experience the world less. Is it wrong, then, for them to be scared of us? Pity them for what they have lost, and at the same time, don't pity them, because they don't want to be pitied. Beneath all that skin and hair, humans are as proud as you and I. For all their faults, they have created great things. Those giant flying birds you see at night. The ships that deliver us fruit and vegetables from continents away. Thank them for strawberries! And in the academies, there are some humans fiercer than even you and I…well, maybe not your father. Nothing's fiercer than he! Hate them not, child, and pity them secretly: For they, too, feel pain._

Blake loosens her hold on her sword and thinks that for all her pride in her senses, she cannot see. Two black eyes ringed with insomnia. Hair that hasn't been washed for weeks. The same clothes he has worn for so long they've frayed, hanging over a stick-thin frame pockmarked with bruises. Beneath the fear, beneath the anger and the hate, she smells a small smell, a lost smell, like a child wrapping himself in a great coat: the earthy smell of loneliness.

Silently, she walks away.


End file.
